


When You Were Young

by garfunkelandgoats



Category: Drop Dead Fred (1991), The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends AU, Codependency, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, drop dead fred au, expect sporadic updates bc my life is a mess rn, vyv POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 16:15:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12535888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garfunkelandgoats/pseuds/garfunkelandgoats
Summary: Inspired by/based on tumblr user red-river-prince's idea for a Drop Dead Fred Rivyan AUFew things ever remained constant in Vyvyan's life, but ultimately, like the cockroach he was, Rick was one of them.





	1. misnomer

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I'm American and I've never written TYO fic before so if I fuck anything up that way and it's easily fixable please let me know

“When You Were Young”

Chapter One  
  
  
  
  
  


 

There are many species of animal whose names would mislead the layman as to their nature, but Vyvyan Basterd was no such creature.

 

No, from the very day he was born it was immediately apparent that he could not have been more aptly named, and a Basterd by any other name would have been just as nasty. Just as vicious.

 

Rather, he belonged to another class of beast entirely: those venomous things who hide behind bright colors--he was a force of nature; rabid, manic, a wild child. From the very beginning, he blew through everything in his path, leaving nothing but rubble in his wake.

 

To say his mother didn’t know what to do with him would be a gross understatement. Rather, she elected not to do anything at all, and the cold shoulder only added fuel to his fire.

 

(Ironically, despite his later describing Rick as such, he was truly the classic example of an only child.)

 

(Even worse? He  _ wasn’t _ even an only child, though he may as well have been.)

 

As the youngest of three, his two brothers years older, old enough to kick his ass on a daily basis without feeling any remote sense of protectiveness over him, he found himself as the odd one out from the moment he was brought home, swaddled in a pink towel that would never be anything but  _ wrong _ .

 

And so Vyvyan grew from a pink and screaming little thing to a spotty, snotty, loud kid with a tangled mess of blonde hair and perpetually skinned knees, often running around the flat in one of his brother’s oversized shirts like some kind of feral child while his mother vegetated on the couch, cigarette in hand.

 

He came to be known, on their street, in the same way a particularly ornery stray cat is known; occasionally fed, mostly kicked. The kids his age feared him and the older kids kicked him around.

 

(No matter, he didn’t care to notice, only kept on chasing rats down alleys with a half-snapped wooden bat and dirty, cut-up feet.)

 

People saw him, he made sure of that, after all they couldn’t  _ not _ ; but hearing him,  _ really _ hearing him--that was another thing entirely.

 

No matter how loudly he screamed, no matter how violently he raged, he seemed to exist to the rest of the world on the same level of an animal in the street. A lost cause. Something to be ignored in the hopes that it would go away. And with the way his mother was, bringing him along to keep watch as she nabbed jewelry from the shops, it seemed to be the general consensus from the very beginning that Vyvyan Basterd would end up dead or in jail sooner rather than later.

 

And so Vyvyan was a wild thing, the sort that lives alone, skulking about the streets like some monster out of a story.

 

Until he wasn’t alone.

 

Rick Pratt moves onto his street in 1969; two years younger and endlessly whiny, he flies under Vyvyan’s radar right up until the moment he doesn’t. On a cloudy morning in late November, operating under the ill-conceived assumption that he could get the bigger kids in his class to stop beating him up by fighting the toughest kid on his street, Rick marches up to Vyvyan with his head held high and without warning tries to slap him across the face, stumbling over himself in the process and only succeeding in leaving a red and vaguely stinging mark across the older boy’s cheek.

 

Vyvyan responds by breaking his nose.

 

Undeterred, Rick sticks around, dogging Vyvyan’s steps no matter how many times he beats him up, and from that is born the closest thing to a friendship young Vyvyan had ever known.

  
(They aren’t friends, not  _ really _ , but it’s more than he had before and more than he’ll have again for a long time.)


	2. small mercies

“When You Were Young”

Chapter Two

  
  
  
  
  
  


Partway through the summer Rick develops an itch on his scalp that eventually devolves into furious, near-frenzied scratching to the point of drawing blood, until one day Vyvyan gets sick of the whining and so he corners him and takes matters into his own hands. 

 

Digging his bony knees into Rick’s back and using his greater weight as leverage to pin him down, he switches on the electric razor in his hand and grins lecherously. At the sound of the buzzing Rick shrieks, trying uselessly to reach around and punch him.

 

“Quit bloody squirming!” He barks at him, digging his knee in harder as he leans forward.

 

“Ow!” Rick kicks at him awkwardly, thrashing about like a fish on the cutting board.

 

“Quit!” He shaves a large patch of Rick’s hair in a single motion that startles him a little in its effectiveness.

 

“What?! What did you do?!” Rick finally manages to knock him off, hand flying to the back of his head as he scrambles away, eyes wide and bulging.

 

And then they’re at it again, scrambling to the ground until Vyvyan gets the upper hand again and shaves Rick bald. 

 

He cries for a week, although he knows better by now than to do it in front of Vyvyan. 

 

Vyvyan pretends he doesn’t notice the redness around his eyes right up until he hears the sniffling, because then there’s a sick little twist in his chest at the sound of it that makes him feel a little ill because it’s so bloody  _ pathetic _ so he smacks Rick upside the head and says “Shut up, girly.” and that’s the end of it.

 

What they have is ugly and it’s scummy and it’s gross but it’s the best either of them could hope for, and so they find themselves drawn to one another again and again, close, gravitating to a shared center, their elbows bumping together conspiratorily in the moments before they remember their place and start fighting again. 

 

The status quo always corrects itself, sure as anything, and so the dance goes on.

 

It’s easy to forget, in their daily routine of senseless violence, that there’s a world outside them, but now and again it still comes knocking. Vyvyan’s reputation as a fucking psychopath is enough to keep them both afloat more often than not, as nobody but the really older kids are dumb enough to even bother with him and Rick is more often than not clinging to his coattails, but Rick is enough of a whiny, groveling little shit for his continued existence to offend his peers.

 

More often than not, it happens when Vyvyan isn’t around to see it, but contrary to popular belief he isn’t nearly as stupid as he lets on and so he notices the bruises that aren’t from him and he squashes the anger that rises in him at the sight of it.

 

Until he doesn’t.

 

Until the outside world comes comes knocking in the worst way, on a grey morning during the death throes of winter. 

 

Vyvyan is kicking the shit out of Rick as usual, down some lonely alley with only a homeless man who is too busy either sleeping or being dead under a moldy newspaper to see or care. He’s bored, beyond bored, and for neither the first nor last time there’s nothing better to do than torment his favorite punching bag.

 

And then the tentative light from the street is blocked out by a wide silhouette. 

 

The older brother of some kid Vyvyan was giving shit--of which there was no shortage, when he wasn’t kicking Rick around he was happy to dish it out to others, while Rick egged him on from the sidelines, too chickenshit to join in in earnest.

 

They both got it good for that, probably deserved it too, but even while he himself was kicking and screaming and putting up a fight, somehow seeing Rick get beat up by somebody who wasn’t him set off something in Vyvyan. 

 

And so screaming he dug his thumbs into the eyes of the older kid who was punching him, delivered a swift kick to the shins of the one who’d cornered Rick, and grabbed the younger boy’s arm roughly before taking off running, practically dragging him behind him.

 

Later, while his mother is passed out drunk on the couch, Vyvyan sneaks a bottle of alcohol and a half-empty box of bandages from the medicine cabinet, and tries to sew up a nasty gash over Rick’s eye with a needle and tangled thread from his long dead grandmother’s disaster of a sewing bag.

 

Rick’s weak jaw is clenched tight to keep from whimpering, his hands balled up into fists as Vyvyan sets to work, surprisingly careful.

 

“Hold still,” he hisses, steadying Rick’s head with one hand as he finishes the last stitch with the other before leaning back to admire his handiwork. “There. Won’t make you too much uglier.”

 

Rick tries to glare at him, but the hot tears threatening to spill any second kind of take away any bite it might have had. Vyvyan avoids his gaze and walks away, leaving Rick to rub at his eyes with the side of his hand as he stays sitting on the kitchen table.


End file.
